Oh okay Fire bhai, I visited Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I liked Dubai better. Like World Cup 2011 bhai saheeb said, I found lots of grass and trees in Dubai.
My Potash dulabhai lives in Dubai (brother in-law). His full name is Muzaffar Abdul Majid Kalam Pottash. Do you know him? You might know him. He wears gold chain and watch.
Pottash bahi saheeb said there are lots of ingenious Bedouin people live around the sand dunes of Dubai. I particularly find Bedouin tribes very interesting. I have studied them on the TLC, Discovery and History channels.
Fire bahia, is there any Bedouin cricket player playing for the UAE team at the moment? Even in the UAE A team or youth team? That would be very interesting. I also think that there should be inter-Arab Cricket Championship - Arabs vs. Bedouins vs. Sub-cont ex-pats. That would be very interesting. What would be most fascinating is - to see herds of camels outside the boundary lines instead of cows, dungs, goats and cobras like in my country.

Originally Posted by al Furqaan
Its not just that, UAE is the next Hong Kong - pending usual middle east security related logistical constraints. ICC headquarters were in London for ages and makes sense. Why would they move their HQ to Dubai circa 2005? Even Delhi or Mumbai or Bangalore makes way more sense.

Dubai is prime real estate. The Emiratis are the wisened Arabs. The Saudis, and others also got rich off fossil fuels but they are [largely] too foolish and lazy to diversify their economies and too selfish to think 50, 100, 1000 years into the future. The UAE did that and started promoting finance, tourism, and whatever else requires excessive bling bling opulence. In fact, notable props recently came from Daniel Pipes, the middle east expert who wrote in 2009 that UAE's extravagence was empty, hollow, and fake and that it would all come crashing down. But he penned a 2017 update in which he said his initial assessment was wrong and that perhaps the UAE is a Islamic model of how a repressive, authoritarian, yet extremely captalistic country could achieve stability. It now appears that KSA under MbS is following or attempting to follow the same model, albeit 15 years later. My guess would that Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain already follow the so-called UAE model.

UAE has 10 years' worth of oil left. Hence, they had to use their head. Meanwhile, the rest of the GCC countries have decades of oil left.

Originally Posted by bujhee kom
??...Didn't get this, US men's or women's national soccer teams do not have a single ex-pat playing, neither the bench warmers nor the 2nd XIs...not from Mexico or anywhere.

Originally Posted by bujhee kom
??...Didn't get this, US men's or women's national soccer teams do not have a single ex-pat playing, neither the bench warmers nor the 2nd XIs...not from Mexico or anywhere.

What are you talking about? At any moment in the last 20 years the US has had any number of German-Americans who speak English with a German accent playing for them. Jermaine Jones or John Brooks of the recent squad, Roy Weagerly (SA) and Ernie Stewart (Dutch) in the years past.

Guys why are you so obsessed about Ops nationality or ethnicity? Debate the topic, not the poster.